Slow Falls the Rain
by redonthefly
Summary: (Night has always pushed up day.)


**A/N - **Initially conceived as a submission for thedominantmountainman community on tumblr, which I took on as a kind personal challenge: what would make our Kristoff let go, and be wild? What prompts that kind of ferocity of emotion? I read something once (it's not uncommon, but this, I think, was in Madeline L'engle's A Ring of Endless Light) that mentioned, very briefly, how people balance emotion: celebrating life to honor death, acknowledging pain to experience joy. This isn't a sad story, but it's based loosely on that idea. And yes, that's a Mumford and Sons lyric.

* * *

She's sitting in bed, quilt and sheets bunched around her knees, trying to see her cross-stitching by the low light of the oil lamp on the wall. It's just a little too far up to be of much good – whenever she changes the oil or needs to turn up the flame she has to stand on her tiptoes or grab a stool – and after an hour of squinting in the not-exactly-dark, her head is beginning to ache.

It isn't late (maybe five o'clock) but an early storm has swept in across the fjord, cloaking Arendelle in the deep dull grey of falling rain. The castle is quiet and nearly empty; below, the courtyard and street leading out the gates have been abandoned by their usual bustle of diplomats and merchants, and the stones are awash in brackish standing puddles.

Somewhere in the distance there's a roll of thunder – too far away for it to bother her, but somewhere up in the mountains, someone is undoubtedly having a rough time. Surely, she thinks, it is too late in the year for snow. Wind rattles the windows.

She chews nervously on her lip and rethreads her needle with a strand of bright blue silk – jams it in to her finger, naturally, and watches with blank fascination as a tiny red dot blooms against her skin. The sampler is one of those designed to teach children – the alphabet, religious verses, patterns and pneumonic devices – the kind she worked on as a little girl, dolled up and sitting primly next to her mother in the drawing room on Sunday afternoons.

Anna has long since learned her letters.

Instead of neatly crossed squares, she draws the colored threads through in whimsical whorls and leaves, flowers and snowflakes. It's a summer pattern, but snowflakes are everywhere these days; people paint them on their doorframes and window boxes, stitch them in lace, and frost them onto cookies. (Elsa has made winter stylish.)

Ice-blue and white she uses for snow. Kelly green for tulip stems and the long, wild arms of a willow, deep pine for the mountain spruces. Yellow: pale lemon and dusty gold, becomes sunshine and lily petals.

For a long moment she stares at the blood on her finger – it's such a pretty color, crimson – and wants to blot it against the linen evenweave, to make cheerful china roses blossom up around the border of her embroidery hoop.

_April showers bring May flowers_.

Okay, that's a little strange (even for her) she thinks, and pops it in her mouth instead, sucking on the hurt. It's reassuring to feel pain there, even now, to see life in what was cold and brittle and numb. She tastes iron on her tongue and daydreams about being in a forge: about fire and heat and bellows that never let the cold air in, that bring metal to a keen edge, red hot and glowing orange.

Kristoff took her to a smithy once, on an errand to sharpen his ice picks and saws. The air was dusty, filled with wood smoke, and it had smelled silvery and sharp. She liked to watch the working men plunge flattened steel into cold buckets of water, and see the shapes the steam made as it escaped.

Thunder claps, duller, further away now; the storm is moving north, pushing into the mountains. Anna peers at the small ornamental clock that sits on her bedside table and counts the hours off on her fingers. _Six_. If Kristoff left this morning like he'd planned, the company would be most of the way home by now.

Beaten by wind and rain maybe, but hopefully they aren't getting mired in a spring snowfall. Kristoff has a vehement dislike of soggy snow; she remembers him grumbling about it over breakfast (and lunch and dinner) earlier in the week.

"_Wet, heavy, dirty, slushy – refreezes like crazy, makes everything more slippery, stupid dangerous…_"

These are chilly thoughts for an already damp afternoon. Anna sits back against the loft of pillows and wiggles her stocking feet deeper into the blankets, resting the tangle of thread and needle and fabric next to the clock. The skin on the inside of her eyelids feels grainy, making her eyes water. Around her, the room swims: blurry and wet, like the courtyard, like the mountain deluge far away.

Maybe if she just rested them for a minute –

(She's asleep in seconds.)

* * *

It takes a fair amount of effort to slam her door (she would know, it had survived her thirteenth year after all); it's tall and wide, solid wood, but hangs perfectly, so that it hardly makes a sound when opened and closed.

Kristoff bursts through it with such a force that she's awake immediately, disoriented, clambering out of the bed and stumbling upright. He doesn't seem to see her; turns and grips both hands above the doorknob and throws it closed with a force that makes the floor quake under her feet.

Slack-jawed, she watches as he rips his pack off his back and flings it into the air; it passes her by at least fifteen feet, but she has a hard time not flinching – _what is this what is wrong wait_ – and falls just short of her vanity, metal clinking loudly within. It rests like a dead thing, lumpy and faceless – the fine details she's embroidered into the leather obscured by rain and mud (a series of the most popular snowflake motifs, appropriate for the official Ice Master, she'd joked, fingers sore from days of pushing a thin needle through thick hide, proud as anything that he'd wear something of hers).

Tearing her eyes off the bundle, she turns around to see Kristoff fall heavily back against the closed back of the door and slump heavily to the floor. He hides his face in his hands, but every line of his body reads strained _don't touch me don't touch me_: his shoulders rise and fall irregularly with heaving, uneven breaths that she can hear from several feet away.

Stepping over, she kneels next to him and rests one hand on his knee – there's no way she wouldn't, even startled and a tiny bit frightened – concern swelling up in her chest until she's afraid she might start to cry.

"We lost someone," he says after a few minutes, answering her unspoken question with a voice clipped and short. Hands fall away and rest on the carpet, but he keeps his eyes tightly closed, and his mouth is a straight and unforgiving line.

Anna doesn't know what to say; death is so abstract: it's something you hear and feel, but don't see.

"It wasn't solid enough – I _knew_ it was too warm – this _fucking shit weather_ – " The straight line crumples, twists; she watches guilt, grief, anger flash across his face. On the floor, his hand blindly seeks hers and clutches at her wrist.

Anna swallows the lump in her throat, and curls her hand around until she's hooked his fingers in hers then gives a gentle tug. He stands without resisting, but hasn't yet met her eyes – she'd worry, except that as soon as he's on his feet he pulls her to him in a crushing hug. A chill emanates from his clothes; he's soaked to the skin despite the careful attention given to dressing for mountain weather.

Rain pounds against the glass – it's cold, but not this unnatural chill – did he jump in? She decides it's not the time for questions, closed in the unyielding circle of his arms. Eyes shut: in her imagination, death is a specter of ice, closing over her head, wrapping around her heart.

Forcing them open, she focuses instead on the steadily _thump thud, thump thud_ of his heartbeat.

"You're warm," he mutters, distractedly winding his hands through the loose hair at the nape of her neck. Against her skin his fingers are still cold, and by the way he's moving she can tell they're stiff and sore; feeling your limbs come alive again after being nearly frozen is painful – rather ironically, it's like being on fire.

Remembering, she burrows her nose into the crook under his arm, letting her breath reflect back into her face, sultry and hot.

Around her shoulders, Kristoff's body is heavy; he's leaning on her with his full weight, and there's nothing she can do but rope her arms around his waist and press her cheek into his chest, letting him pull warmth from her.

The clock on the bedside table sings the hour.

His breathing slows, becomes fuller and less jagged, and the weight on her body – he presses on every joint; not painfully, exactly, but substantial – eases a little. As she rubs his back (briskly, a vain attempt to warm him) he stands tall again, loosening his grip on her and settling into a more natural stance, with his chin resting on the top of her head.

Then his hands are on her shoulders, quickly, moving her back just a fraction so that she's looking straight up into his face. His hair is still mostly plastered to his head, but bits of it are beginning to dry, fluffing up on his forehead and around his ears. Under his eyes the skin is dark and a little puffy from lack of sleep, but his eyes themselves are clear and bright and looking at her with a peculiar intensity; his expression keen under four-day stubble.

"I missed you," she says.

It sounds so inadequate.

Kristoff stiffens, and there's a fleeting moment when she fears it was the wrong thing to say, but it's lost when his lips attack hers, roughly, tense and tight against her mouth. One large hand covers the back of her head, pushing, pushing up, kneading into the muscles at the base of her neck while the other presses deep between her shoulder blades.

Whiskers scratch at her neck as he moves from her mouth, sucking on the soft skin until she gasps, and is rewarded with the slight tug of his teeth.

_He bites_. That's new.

"Kristoff?" It comes out differently than she intended, more like a whisper, more like a question; her body is responding (oh, and it _is_, it's a conscious effort to not rub her thighs together, to move against him and the evidence of his affection) but she wants to understand _why_. Kristoff pulls away from her neck with a shuddering breath and looks at her through half lowered lids, one hand still tightly gripping her hip as they stand pressed together. Her shirt is getting soggy against his sodden clothes. Through the thick layers of overcoat and sweaters, his body is hard against hers: chest, legs and everything in between. She shifts and feels a draft of cold air on her back; he's halfway succeeded in undressing her, and she hadn't even noticed.

"_I need you_," he groans, simple words that somehow sound utterly filthy.

Lifting a hand, she pushes a lock of hair from his forehead, softly, slowly, and examines him closely: _really_ looks, taking in the full picture of what he'd been saying, and now doing – the slammed door, the pack in the corner, the forcefulness behind his hands on her body. A thrill of mixed surprise and arousal runs down her spine and she shivers; this is raw, untempered need like she's never seen: to feel alive, to remember what living is.

"Tell me to stop, " he begins, but she swallows his words with another kiss, drags her tongue against his lower lip and squeals when he growls into her mouth, moving around her again with taut and coiled precision.

Solid arms scoop her up, carrying her across the room; her skirt is thin enough to feel the muscles in his forearms rolling under her thighs, fingers that grip into her waist and grasp, hard enough to bruise, she suspects, the softer flesh of her backside. Anna bites the inside of her cheek to keep from bursting out into nervous and excited laughter – this is so unlike, well, everything – but Kristoff doesn't appear to notice: just lets her fall back on to the unmade bed and, pinning her to the mattress with his knees, yanks distractedly at his hide coat, sweater and sash until they fall, crumpled and swollen with rainwater on the floor.

She scrambles further up on the bed, heart pounding, thrilled, wriggling out of her dress (totally unlaced, really, she's going to have to ask him how he managed that already) and stretches out as he climbs over her. The skin on his chest is still cool when she runs her hands down his sides, but his palms on her stomach are warm.

A few good kicks and his wool trousers join the rest of his clothes; hovering over her, he shudders and she feels it everywhere: how the bed shakes, where his hips are pressed firmly against hers, between her legs, a throbbing, aching vacancy.

It's one thing to make love.

To be wanted like this – open, unapologetic, primal – is something wholly different.

Her sweet Kristoff isn't here tonight; she's going to have the mountain man, rugged and fierce.

The idea makes her quiver, desire overcoming timidity. Her skin tingles wherever he touches her, electric, ready to snap: she writhes against him, wanton and open, reveling in the recklessness, the wildness of it.

Kristoff's eyes are dark, hooded and heavy, staring at her between rough kisses and short bites that trace down her neck, shoulders and collarbone.

Her head is filled with the heady scent of them - sweat and the sheepy lanolin aroma of wet wool, skin and dirt and sex mingling with her gardenia perfume. The cool air of the room licks at her bare shoulders and down her back, but every breath she pulls in is humid and warm, human and alive. She'd be dizzy if he wasn't grounding her, hands clamp on her upper arms as his mouth works against her, would be spinning, she's sure, if not for the bolts of pleasure coursing the length of her limbs when his teeth tug her nipples, or calloused fingers scrape against the dip of her lower back.

Balancing on his knees he fills her with thrusts that promise to bruise, raises her up and hooks her legs high around his waist. Broad hands cover the span of her hips, cupping her behind and pulling her onto himself, fast, faster, curses she's never heard him utter falling thick and fast.

The pace grows frantic, unmeasured; her fingers fist bedclothes, then he shifts, the angle changing just enough so she's tumbling, flailing, coming apart. Kristoff follows moments later with a low, guttural sound, jerking erratically, nails digging into her thighs.

Exhausted, sated and drained, they collapse together in a heap of arms and legs and blankets – Anna strokes Kristoff's damp hair as he nuzzles into her shoulder, and they slip quietly into the fog of sleep.

* * *

It's unnaturally quiet when she wakes – she almost thinks it's a dream, except that Kristoff's arm is too warm and solid draped over her back – and after a moment she realizes it's because the rain has stopped. The howl of wind and lashing whip of water against the castle has ceased at last.

Turning carefully (he sleeps like the dead anyway, but she especially doesn't want to wake him now) toward the window, she smiles; the curtains are still parted, and through them she can see faint light on the far horizon – a new morning coming.

She pulls a blanket closer around her bare shoulders and burrows down again, wiggling until she's tucked in the crook of Kristoff's sleeping body.

Warmth always returns in the end. Light from darkness, life from death.

(Night has always pushed up day.)


End file.
